My wife isn't sure what she believes anymore. But, she leans toward a god being there and evolution being true. Like maybe at key moments or starting places evolution was directed. Is that what you would call Theistic Evolution?
Evolution is Crap, there I said it!
by Crazyguy 261 Replies latest jw friends
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Watkins
It CAN be civil - just don't take the uncivil posts to heart - scroll, scroll, scroll. ;) There are so many good and infomative posts on this thread, I think I'm actually learning something!
Yes, those were some of 'the theories within the theory' I was thinking of in my earlier post. I've often wondered why everything(it seems like, literally) must end up at the extreme ends of 2 opposites. And I've often wondered if the real truth of anything might be more towards the middle of the extremes. Not 'fence-sitting', but really being able to discern and appreciate the compatible parts of each argument.
Anyway, that's where I am, evaluating both sides from a middle-view vantage point. The facts aren't even all in, but there's undeniable proof of evolution. BUT, that doesn't negate there being a Cause. Belief in God isn't necessarily proveable to others - it's something we 'know' and 'feel' - a private and individual experience that gives us undeniable proof of God's existence. It doesn't have anything to do with one religion or another or one holy book or another. imho. Much of the evolution debate seems to hinge on what fundamentalists believe about the Bible. I think the literalist view is Crap, there I said it!
In my mind, God created science and they are awesomely synchronistic, not opposing.
I hope, crazyguy, that by throwing out such an aggressive statement in your OP, that you haven't closed your mind to possibilities. By planting yourself at one extreme, it's hard to keep an open mind to the immense potentialities that CAN co-exist in harmony. Let's not be argumentative, but friendly and honest, willing to learn from each other. I understand the either/or thinking, but I assure you, no matter what anyone says, that faith in God does not have to be at odds with also believing that evolution happened/is happening. Why, I'm doing it right now!
What we call 'climate change' is evolution in motion.
watkins
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scotoma
I don't understand why those who believe in evolution even get involved in these casual discussions about creation vs. evolution.
If you don't believe in god you must understand that life is too short to be wasted with people who are also going to die whether they believe in god or not.
It seems to be a profound waste of time.
If you are a scientist studying life origins just go about your business.
Public policy is an important arena for discussing these things and they are often settled in court.
The only ones with skin in these discussions are the god believers. They want to save souls and they feel that they are saving their own souls by defending their god.
What is the motive for ordinary people who love science to engage in these ignorant discussions.
You can go anywhere on the internet and find long involved threads that just rehash the same stuff. How many times do you need to see the musical Oklahoma?
Meanwhile vacines are saving lives. Asteroids are being tracked. Global climate is being monitored. Bumble Bee mortality is being investigated. Genomes are being mapped. Causes of disease are being verified along with cures.
If people in the United States and the Muslim world don't think that science is important then India, China and Europe will thrive and the countries that stifle scientific research will disappear.
There is an old Russian aphorism: "The parade passes and the dogs bark."
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cofty
What is the motive for ordinary people who love science to engage in these ignorant discussions.
Because this is a support forum for JWs. Creationism is a fundamental doctrine of the Watchtower. A doctrine that many ex-JWs are still stuck with.
We can trade proof texts with JWs about the trinity or the soul all day long but evolution can be proven by an overwhelming body of objective evidence. When we present that in a way that is easily understood at least some JWs will think about it.
The Common Ancestry thread has 4600 views, The Greatest Show on Earth thread has almost 3000 and there are many other similar threads.
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5go
If life was designed the designer really sucked.
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snare&racket
I'll be honest it is soooooooo frustrating to offer EVIDENCE time and time again for over half a decade, for the same people to come and ask the same questions answered long ago..... But whats worse, is them doing it in front of new people to the forum, asking with interest for the first time.
The old guys don't want to know the answers, they want to make it look like there is a debate, they want it to look like a complex, unstable , controversial issue and area of science yet to be clarified. This is totally nonsense. It is like questioning the theory of gravity with a straight face...
The fact they repeat the same questions despite the evidence existing for over a century now, despite even realising that their questions makes obvious to anyone that has read ANYTHING about evolution that they haven't, the fact that they don't even know what evolution is, no really, no honestly, no as unbelievable as it sounds to be arguing against something you can't even define... These all happen in EVERY thread on evolution. Nevermind "its only a theory" ....this equates to holding up a big red sign saying "I did bad in science...lol"
it is so enfuriating... Because I want to help, because I know what this knowledge did for my life..... BUT THESE PEOPLE THAT JUMP IN DON'T REALLY WANT TO KNOW if they did they would have taken a look at the evidence, the literature, the sky high pile of books explaining this process to us simpletons.... But they don't. They quote jesus and yaweh..... The bits that make sense to them anyway. They insist there must be a god, they don't say why or how, then they don't explain why or how it is their god (by chance) which they learned through their religion (wow,by chance again) and via their holy books (triple wow for being so lucky) and all this evidence that proves them wrong? Its either...
fake,
false,
a coconspiracy,
from the devil....
they don't even understand that EVIDENCE can be nothing but EVIDENCE, they can argue interpretation for sure, but EVIDENCE is exactly as the name suggests. Fossils, DNA, natural selection, genetic mutation, species now living that didnt live millenia ago, species that lived a millenia ago not living now, the age of the earth, the 30 elements now used to age things, these are all parts of the evidence.... Evolution is a collection evidence that fits a hypothesis p, making it the best theory to explain the evidence. Been as you can never have ALL the evidence in the universe, a theory is a high as we can go with such observations as humans right now... Hence gravity is just a theory, atoms are just a theory..... Get it now?....
Not one piece of evidence has dislodged the theory of evolution, a theory that simply joins all the evidence together and it fits beautifully.
Anyone out there can join the dots with a new theory if they wish, but they can't, they don't. Christian scientists who reject evolution and or evolution without gods initiative, number only 3% of all scientists and the outright rejectors are a small minority of that 3%. These people don't claim that the bible fits the evidence, they don't talk aout the evidence that proves the bible wrong. They go trawling through science looking for anomalies that don't fit with our current,progressing theory of evolution. Every piece of evidence we find, we add to the theory. Christians will quote evolutionary science from 100 years ago and then quote a modern paper saying "and now this find has proven previous evolutionary concepts to be questionable" implying that it debunks evolution. it doesnt, it changes one minor detail in a huge vast mega science of facts, data and science. but guess what there is not one jigsaw piece out there debunking the whole of evolution... not one.... dont believe me? do you not think you would know it by now?.
So some people don't want to know.... you could say "well that's up to them." ...... Yes, yes it is. But despite ignoring our suggestions for books, despite our pleas that they visit museums, despite our time and effort showing, referencing and pointing to evidence they could find themselves...(something we had to do for ourselves when we left the JW's) . They still come running when a new inquisitive mind asks "Whats all that evolution milarchy about?" .....then comes the ignorant, same old same old, repeat what they heard at church... Nonsense.... Remember they can't even DEFINE evolution..... And the new persons thread gets lost in a pile of mud slinging and embarrassingly, uneducated arguments (uneducated in the science of evolutionary biology).
yeah..... It kinda gets me annoyed.
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Crazyguy
OK i admit it, I should of said 'major evolution as a theory is crap', yes minor evolutionary changes have been documented in nature, but major ones no. And if Life just came about as some random event then why can not scientists that know all the major components that are needed to make life, yet they still can not create life in a lab. Case closed.
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snare&racket
You are a troll...... You have to be.... Or you are nuts.....
what on earth do you think MINOR evolution is? What do you think MAJOR evolution is? I think you mean micro and macro for a start.., terms used by people who pretend that small creatures who live and die quickly and so evolve quickly RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES are not the same as big animals who take longer to live and die and so can't be watched evolving at the same pace. Of course the same processes that cause the small living things to evolve happen in us too....Of course we can dig and find that all animals today aren't in the ground, there are VERY similiar ones down there. The deeper they go, the slighter they change..... You never find newer animals deeper down. You never find older animals higher up..... Get it?
Macro and micro evolution are the same thing, they are both mutations of DNA, selected by environment, can you not see how dumb it is to say small things CAN evolve but big things CAN'T ?? Whats your opinion on the fact small things evolve without god?
now you have conquered evolution 'case closed', now you wish to tackle 'abiogenesis'.... Probably without knowing it, so google it, if the words are big use a dictionary. People have dedicated their lives to procuring the evidence for abiogenesis, much the same as evolution (big aaaaand small kinds) so ill be interested in your evidence and research.
I assume you have an interesting words for the miller experiment (nucleic acids out of thin air.......no? Google + dictionary again )
Lastly.... I assume when you are talking about creating life, you of course refer to life including the ribosome..... Because we have created life in the lab, a bacteria..., from chemicals alone, it actually came 'alive' and functioned as normal. One tiny piece of the cell had to be borrowed from a living cell, a ribosome, its not impossible to make, just really small and complex (like VHS machines to dvd) so it will be done soon enough. Before you go ha ha ha ha see you need a ribosome... Ribosomes act like a sorting office and join amino acids together... It is not a very spiritual or godly structure, its just hard to make right now because of its size. Its not the brain of a living thing or anything special, though it plays an important roll as every part does. We started with chemicals, we made acids that were then made into DNA, we made a living, functioning alive bacteria.... And god never breathed at all.
but yes we created life from nothing but chemicals that can be found on earth, having come from space, from the stars that we know make them, from stars we know we're made following a Big Bang..... So we are doing well hey.
In all sincerity what science have you done? What papers, experiments, knowledge have you contributed to mankind? I would love to read your work crazyguy, you ask the most 'out of the box' (schroedingers cat would approve) thinking for an adult. Well done.
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Shador
major evolution as a theory is crap', yes minor evolutionary changes have been documented in nature, but major ones no
There is no "major" and "minor" evolution. What dolts who make this distinction don't grasp is that so-called "major" evolution is the same thing as so-called "minor" evolution, just over a longer time period.
What is the motive for ordinary people who love science to engage in these ignorant discussions?
Because I enjoy insulting and verbally abusing people who insist on being willfully ignorant.
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Max Divergent
...except computer programmers have noted that when code has randoms added the code deteriorates.
Computers are simple, life is complex. That means computers work in one and only one way: that is the code needs to meets certain rules and random changes mess that up. Life can exist in a whole lot of ways and still be life, there're no specific rules for it like there are for computer code. That's the difference between simple (random changes mess things up) against complex (the right random changes stick and make something new).
That is the same argument as in the old blue Creation book where they talked about a wrist watch being put in a box and shaken up for a bllion years of random events (or whatever the exact thing was). They rightly said it'd never make a watch despite all the right pieces being there and being subject to random events. They're right, but that is irrelevent to how random events lead to life becaue life is complex and can go together in lots of ways, but a watch or computer code need to be assembled in a specific order to work.
Thus complex thngs can evolve, simple things have to be made. Sincere enquirers can read Richard Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker on this point.
